Deep linkDeep link

In affiliate marketing a deep link is a tracking link whose destination is a specific page on the brand's site. The publisher writes about a pair of boots and links to the boots, not to the home page. On the network's link the destination is usually a parameter of its own, percent-encoded so its ?, = and / don't break the outer address: url=https%3A%2F%2Fyourbrand.example%2Fsale decodes to https://yourbrand.example/sale.

Without a destination the network sends the shopper to the programme's default page. With one, the network checks it belongs to your site, sends the shopper on, and records the click against the publisher's id.

• A deep link to a page that no longer exists usually lands on your site's own fallback, often the home page.
• A destination on another domain than yours is worth asking your network about.
• %253A means the destination was encoded twice: %25 is the percent sign itself.

The guide to reading an affiliate link takes a link apart part by part, and redirect covers what happens after it's clicked.